Dienstag, den 05. März 2024:
This month we are introducing a book about childhood.

The book is ‘Boyhood, Scenes from Provincial Life’, a fictionalized, autobiographical novel, by J.M. Coetzee, published in 1997. J.M. Coetzee is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he has worked in the UK, the USA, South Africa and Australia, where he now lives. He won the Booker Prize in 1983 and 1999 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. ‘Boyhood’ is the first of a trilogy of fictionalized memoirs, the others being ‘Youth’ (2002) and ‘Summertime’ (2009).

The publisher’s description of the book reads as follows: In ‘Boyhood’ J.M. Coetzee revisits South Africa of half a century ago, to write about his childhood and interior life. ‘Boyhood’’s young narrator grew up in a small country town. With a father he imitated but could not respect, and a mother he both adored and resented, he picked his way through a world that refused to explain its rules, but whose rules he knew he must obey. Steering between these contradictions, ‘Boyhood’ evokes the tensions, delights and terrors of childhood with startling, haunting immediacy. Coetzee examines his young self with the dispassionate curiosity of an explorer discovering his own early footprints, and the account of his progress is bright, hard and simply compelling.
Here are this month’s books recommended by Reading Circle members:

• ‘Youth’, the second book in Coetzee’s trilogy of fictionalized memoirs, in which the author escapes from South Africa to London.
• ‘Pygmalion’ (1913) by George Bernard Shaw. Named after the Greek mythological figure, its themes are social class, identity and the power of language.
• ‘Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land’ (2017) by Amos Oz. A collection of three powerful and timely essays on the rise of zealotry in Israel and around the world.
• ‘Mad Honey’ by Jodie Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (2022), a riveting coming-of-age tale that explores gender identity, friendship and self-acceptance.
• ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ (2016) by Amer Towles, the story of a Russian aristocrat living under house arrest in a luxury hotel for more than thirty years. Fantastical romance, politics, espionage, parenthood and poetry.
• ‘One Second After’ by William R. Forstchen (2009), an apocalyptic thriller in which a deadly electromagnetic pulse instantly disables almost every electrical device in the U.S and elsewhere in the world.
• ‘Small Things Like These’by Claire Keegan (2021). In 1985 in a small Irish town, while delivering an order to the local convent, a coal merchant makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
• ‘Paths of Glory’ by Jeffrey Archer (2009), is based on the story of George Mallory, who died attempting to climb Everest in the 1920’s

And they also recommended two films about childhood:

• ‘Boyhood’ (2014) directed by Richard Linklater. Incidents that occur across a period of twelve years mould MJ’s life.
• ‘The 400 Blows’ (‘Les Quatre Cents Coups’), directed by Francois Truffaut. This is a coming-of-age drama about Antoine, a misunderstood adolescent who leaves home and gets involved in petty crime in Paris, discovering the city as never before. It’s one of the defining films of the French New Wave.

Music played:

• Miriam Makeba and Friends singing ‘Graceland Land’ from the Zimbabwe concert, introduced by Paul Simon.
• Paul Simon and Miriam Makeba singing ‘Under African Skies’.